Balers and similar machines have been employed for many years in the agricultural industries for gathering and packaging agricultural crops, for example hay, into bales. The bales are then used for purposes including feeding livestock. As baler technology developed, and particularly with the advent of balers for producing large rectangular bales, bale accumulators were produced to collect the bales generated by a baler, position the bales on the ground in a selected array or pattern, for pick-up by another machine, for example a bale grab. U.S. Pat. No. 4,053,064 to Stewart, for example, discloses such a hay bale collector, wherein bales are shifted into alternating compartments, the entire load dumped when the compartments are filled by allowing the bales to come into frictional engagement with the ground surface and be thereby pulled off of the collector. U.S. Pat. No. 4,215,964 to Schrag et al. teaches a bale-accumulating trailer that can accumulate multiple bales and dump them in a fashion similar to Stewart, using frictional engagement with the ground surface. U.S. Pat. No. 5,829,238 to Branson also teaches a bale accumulator that accommodates multiple bales, while sensors are employed to lower the platform on which the bales rest to allow them to come into frictional engagement with the ground surface. Finally, U.S. Pat. No. 5,842,823 to Kohnen et al. also discloses a bale-accumulating trailer that is tilted to allow ground surface contact as a means to pull the bales form the trailer prior to pick-up by a bale grab. Various mechanisms are employed to move the bales toward the back of the accumulator for dumping, such as the dumping frame of Kohnen et al., although many accumulators are of a size that only one row of bales can be received and moving on the accumulator platform is therefore not required.
A recurring problem with multiple-bale bale accumulators, however, is that they fail to dump the multiple bales in an even arrangement, usually requiring shutting down the baler and manually repositioning the bales prior to pick-up. An even arrangement, for example positioning the bales such that they are flush at one end, is necessary for stable stacking of bales on a truck or other transport means. Another problem is that the mechanism employed to move a bale rearwardly on the bale accumulator often requires that the operator stop the baler operation during dumping of a load of bales and until the mechanism has returned to a position to receive the next load. For example, with accumulators that employ a pusher arm or similar device to move the bales in a rearward direction, ejection of bales from the baler must be stopped or bales will come down in front of the arm, preventing its return to the start position at the front of the accumulator. In addition, the design of most accumulators forces the operator to dump the multiple bales in a location determined by the time of filling the accumulator; this may be in a convenient location for pick-up but often it is not.